Moreover, your subjects--for, to be
candid, you are a despot--seem to like you. You minister so craftily
to their self-esteem, you flatter their vanity with an adroitness
so remarkable, that, after a few feeble struggles, they resign
themselves, body and soul, to your thrall. Even then you proceed
warily. Your first labour is to collect, with patient care, all the
little elements of dissatisfaction that are latent in every nature,
and to blend them with the petty disappointments to which even the
best of us are liable. The material thus obtained you temper with
intentions that seem to be good, and eventually you forge out of it a
weapon of marvellous point and sharpness, with which you mercilessly
goad your victims along the path that leads to ridicule and disaster.
Let me take an instance which I am sure you will remember. When
I first met little DABCHICK, I thought I had never seen a happier
mortal. He was clever, good-natured, and sprightly. He sold tea
somewhere in Mincing Lane, and on the proceeds of his sales he managed
to support a wife and two pleasant children in reasonable comfort
at Balham.
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